The First Ten Lives of Richard Grayson
by 60sec400
Summary: Dick's first life probably went as it should. He grew up until… the fall. His parents fell and his life was torn. He moved in with Bruce Wayne, and everything changed. His life in four sentences. At least, the first one. He would live many, many more. AU.


**This is based off the story by Claire North titled 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August'. It's just the idea, which I liked. This is a one shot and exploring it all and I probably won't make it a longer multi-chapter fic. I don't own the concept or the characters, but I hope everyone get's some enjoyment from reading it and the idea! I encourage you to read the actual book. It's wonderful and great and I love, love, loved it. Enjoy!**

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Dick's first life probably went as it should. He grew up until… the fall. His parents fell and his life was torn. He moved in with Bruce Wayne, and everything changed.

His life in four sentences.

At least, the first one.

He became Robin and then he became Nightwing. And then the invasion and Darkseid and then everything was terrible. And then he woke up in his second life. By the time he was seven, he was fully aware of everything. He was awake, an adult, in a child's body. Dick remembered Wally West's death at the age of twenty one, he recalled the future that had burned the Earth. And he could not stand to watch people, his lovely, beautiful parents, die again. He went crazy. He was sent to Arkham for several months.

Before they fell for the second time, he was waking up in his third life. It was always the age of seven. He didn't know what it was, and he didn't know why that was. By the age of seven, he knew what had happened in his first life and his short second one. Dick didn't do anything this time. He made no motion to indicate his predicament and he made no move to let them. As far of Mary and John Grayson were concerned, Dick's only worry in life was practice and his homework. He watched and waited.

Dick's knowledge of future events did give him some sort of an edge, and he was aware of more things than he had been before. But he watched. And he waited.

It was worrying for a little bit. He was unsure if he could maintain an eight year old's level of knowledge, but even in his innocent first life he'd been unusually smart. Bruce had remarked his proficiency in math and his mother often noted his strange fascination with Gotham news. Perhaps his knowledge of people and events shined through, but he made no motion to change everything, no move to alter events. He did not know if what he was was a time traveler. He simply woke up and relived his life, over and over. Everything that he did not affect did not change, it did not move. It was independent.

Dick supposed that was all well.

In his third life, he did not change a thing. Dick watched as Zucco's men messed with the lines. He did, for the better half of the day, think of saying something, but when the time came he did not utter a word of their future demise. Mary and John Grayson fell, and Dick watched for the second time of their three lives. The pain was fresh, and he recalled that he had thought of them every day until he died at the age of 73. It was 2067. He'd think of his mother's voice. His father's laugh.

Senseless memories or no? He suffered through the orphanage in old thoughts and tears and regret.

And then Bruce Wayne came. He'd been long dead by the time Dick's death had rolled around, and he found himself so thankful again. It was true, no eight year old child could live on his own, and mentally Dick was not eight years old, but he still appreciated Bruce Wayne for the father he became. And despite the arguments and the choices made in the future, Dick spent his third life much like he had his first— gung ho and living and smiling and waiting silently to see if his second and third lives were dreams.

They were not.

So it goes, he supposed. But he got to meet his friends again, and his family. Dick made subtle changes; but he kept what he could the same. Jason's death and return, and Damian's indoctrination into Robin, Barbara's transformation into Oracle and Duke's and Kate's welcome into the clan. He went to every one of Cass's dance recitals, and he and Steph went on weekly, or monthly if they were busy, shopping trips. Dick lived only to 70 in his third life. It was unexpected, but then his fourth life rolled around.

Dick kept his voice silent until he saw Zucco's men messing with the lines. He turned from the tent and snuck to his parents trailer. There are men messing with the lines, he said, I thought I would tell you.

They did not die that day. They would not die that day in that life.

March 21st, 2005 came and went and became March 22nd, 2005 and Dick had Mary and John Grayson and Karla and Johnny and Richard and his family. For a few days, he lived in complacent, childlike happiness. He felt more like the eight year old he really was versus the 150 year old he mentally was supposed to be. He supposed he felt more like he had than he ever had in his third life. Or his second, but he really didn't count that one.

He had them for a full year before the Court of Owls ripped them away. Or rather, they ripped him from them. And he was made Talon and became theirs. He was not Robin, he was Talon. He was not Richard Grayson, a part of the Flying Grayson's, he was Richard Grayson, a part of the Court of Owls. It was his birthright. He suffered through the maze, screaming at them and at yourself. He remember everything about his first life. Every detail. His second is agonizingly detailed as well, and he suddenly wished he had a window he could throw himself out of this time. His third was happy and complacent, like your first, as much as it could be with all the pain. But in relative terms to how the fourth and second went, one and three were the Secret Garden. But now, in his fourth, he is torn away again and ripped from people he hadn't even met yet.

His skin turned white and papery and his blood was black like veins of oil. They pricked him with needles and asked him questions and killed him over and over but he would not wake up again in his next life. Had they all been dreams? Was he crazy? He died, again and again, and then he did woke up still a Talon, still a servant to the Court. He trudged and lived for hundreds of years in a foggy ruin of his own mind. He fought with a sword and faced the Justice League, his family, and Batman, his other-father, and pointed his sword at them and hissed words made of poison.

He finally manage to convince someone to cut his head off, to end his misery. In that life, he lived to be 468 years old. Short for the life of a Talon. Long for… whatever he was.

He hated that life. Because then he woke up in his fifth life. Because then he was seven, and he knew he had killed and that he had broken Batman's number one rule. He had become a murder, an assassin. He'd lived through his hundreds of years in a haze under the Court's thumb. He decided he could not save his parents. Their death meant that others would live and Dick found that worth it. He hated that.

His fifth life was spent in research. And he made sure to raze the Court of Owls before they knew about them and then he lived his life. He kept it all from Bruce and Jason, and then Tim, and even Barbara. He would take the Court out again and again every life if he had too. He'd already broken the rule, and so long as Bruce never discovered, and he never would, then Dick was safe.

He went to college that time, he stayed at Gotham U. He'd always wondered what that would do. It didn't stop the invasion, nor did it end any of the other events. But he studied Historical Research and minored in Archelogy. It confused Bruce, and many of the league, greatly. But Bruce supported his effort, and Dick found himself taking a brief break from Nightwing to travel. The team was okay, and his long break from after Wally's third death allowed him to spend time looking for what he was.

Was he human? A meta-human? An alien?

The answer was, partly, in an old town in Yugoslavia. The woman owned one of the oldest libraries in Europe not destroyed the war. He collected his research and returned to Bludhaven. There were writings from others, like graffiti. He followed the maps and ended up in Northern Canada, in Nova Scotia. He dug up a record in a box, bound together by thick twine. He returned back to the manor, pulling a record player from the attic.

A recording of 'We'll Meet Again'.

A note.

 _Add to me where you see fit. –Antony, 1942_

Under it had several other's contributions.

 _Sylvia was here!_

And an address. He took it and wrote his little note, burying it back down in the ground in Nova Scotia. Bruce questions his trips, but Dick waves him off.

Dick traveled into Gotham. He stood outside the building of the address, looking up at the nonchalantness (was that a word?) of it. It was decorated like all the other housing in Gotham— intended to be better than it was. Outside it was a plaque with a strange creature. Dick waited for several days. There were others. That was all he needed.

This could wait. He had plenty of lives to live.

He left. The good things of his lives he made sure to treasure— Barbara and Jason, Tim, Steph, Damian, Cass, Duke, Kate, Bruce. He cherishes Wally when he lives, and Artemis. He is still angry toward M'gann, but he can't change her. Maybe he will try one day. Maybe he shouldn't have done things the same. He is worried about changing things, and as he leaves the sidewalk from across the strange building, Dick thinks that maybe he really isn't the only one.

In his fourth life, right before he died, he wondered if he should tell anyone.

His sixth life he studies computer engineering. He seeks help from Babs and this time he makes sure he and Wally don't drift apart. It helps when Dick wants to pull Artemis back in. But Wally still dies.

So it goes.

He hates his attitude. But it had only taken him six lives to become more like Batman. He supposes that that is a good thing. Maybe not, so he makes a point to be less like him. He smiles more and when he gets into his seventh life it is him who 'dies' instead of Artemis. There is no Tigress, but there is Renegade. Dick interacts with Slade Wilson unlike he ever had before and the man bears some strange fascination with training him. Perhaps he knows Renegade is Dick Grayson and Dick has a strange instinct to be rid of Deathstroke the Terminator like he was Talon again. He shoves the thought aside.

When he returns, the team is furious. Barbara does not talk to him for months, almost years. She is angry. About him. Jason. Tim is upset and ignores him. He finds Dick's company insufferable for only a few months before he forgives him and beats his chest hard for making him think that Dick had died.

Dick wants to blurt the truth. He wants to tell them all he was so afraid of being Batman, of sacrificing others. Even though the plan was the same as his first life. And his third. And his fifth. And sixth. He can't watch himself drift from Wally and watch Kaldur betray them all and M'gann destroy his mind. So he sacrificed himself. But he can't say that. He took the blame.

So he says nothing. He doesn't tell them. He lets Tim scream and Barbara ignore him and let's Bruce glare at him and not deal with his problems. But he doesn't say anything.

His seventh life is spent mostly alone. He leaves for Bludhaven and for several years, until Damian, he does not return. He supposes he looks to the younger boy as a son. It's taken several lives, and in his tenth it's when he finally slips up and calls Damian son. But he wishes he could've done it earlier. His seventh life he lives much longer and he even makes it point to minimize the damage between Darkseid and Earth. It helps, and no longer do they live in the future Bart came to describe. He aims to try that every time. He really already had.

It doesn't help with the relationship with the team. Wally dies. Nothing seems to change that and, like he was with his parents, he doesn't know what will happen.

He can't let himself slip up. After Wally dies for the eighth time in his many, many lives, Dick breaks down. He tried so hard to keep everyone alive, to keep everyone happy. He lived through his parents death, through Jason's, and Wally's. He watched Barbara get shot and watched Damian be killed by Heretic. Sometimes he changed things, but he was too afraid. Not for himself, for them. What if there was something worse?

Barbara's broken body haunted him even several lives later. So he didn't stop anything. But who was he to decide?

He broke. M'gann sat there with him, rubbing his back and talking to him in a low, quiet voice. He looked at her and let her see everything. She leaves without speaking.

Later, she returns.

"How many?"

He doesn't look at her. "Eight so far."

She leaves without reply. He wondered if she got her answer. He doesn't even know if she was asking how many years or how many lives. A few weeks later, she pulls him aside.

"Why haven't you done anything?"

And then he is angry. He gets so angry. He's angry about his lives and Wally dying and Jason dying because no matter what Dick tries, he can never prevent it because the League needs him and who is he to decide if they get to die so Jason can live? He begins to yell and he shouts and he screams at her that she knows he has done something, he knows she has. She saw his mind.

He doesn't come back to the cave for weeks.

His eighth live ends with Blockbuster and a Spider. That night haunts him. And then he wakes up in his ninth life. No one knows now. M'gann is as she was; she has no idea.

After he destroys the court, Dick leaves the team and goes to school. He takes a break. He can't do it again. He studied art history this time, for fun. He asks Barbara with him to Venice and the two travel and fight crime and look at cool art. He's asked her to marry him in other lives. Sometimes she said yes, other times it was too soon and she said no.

She said yes in his ninth life. And he loved her until the day he died. He was 82. The longest he lived thus far.

By the time his tenth came around, Dick found himself sitting and waiting. He'd gone through ten lives. He sat down one day and thought about it all. He wondered how this would turn out. His mother was making spaghetti tonight. It still tasted as good as his first life.

"What are you thinking about, sweet pea?"

"Hmm?" he hummed, looking over, "Oh, nothing mama."

Mary Grayson looked at him strangely. "You have a look on your face…" She says it beneath her breath, not meant to be heard. She says it as she turns away from him. He makes a point to make her smile after that.

They fall again. He meets Bruce Wayne. He comes Robin. Then Nightwing. One day, he sits the League down. At least, the ones that know him. None know what this is about.

So he tells them. "I am Richard Grayson. I am eighteen years old. I am 1041 years old. I have lived ten lives. When I die, I wake up. When I am seven, I remember everything and I live life again. I've changed things before, I've left things the same. I thought I'd be honest with you."

He opens up his mind to J'onn and M'gann and they tell everyone the truth and show them and there are long silences and lots of questions and Dick wearily tells them memories from his lives.

"Why are you telling us now?" they ask.

He hates his world view. He has grown so tired of everything. So he tells them the truth. "Why not? In the end, I will die and I will wake up in my eleventh life."

But then Bruce comes over, he's taken off the cowl, and he rests a hand on his shoulder. "Dick?" is the only thing he asks.

And Dick starts to cry. They comfort him. In the end, that is all he asks. He doesn't tell them that when he finally dies, they will remember none of this. But he keeps his mouth silent. Black Canary offers to help him in his research. So he gives her what he's found. There are others, he says, like me. They live every life they have and remember. Is he a time traveler? Does he transcend dimensions with every new life with knowledge of the previous ones? He doesn't know.

He is called an Ouroboran. It is the symbol that was on the building of Gotham. It represents eternal return and introspection. The dragon eats its own tail. He laughs at that and then thinks that he finally knows what he is. He has a name, not quite human, not quite not. He is also a Mnemonic. But he keeps that to himself.

His is Richard Grayson. He is forty three years old. He is 1058 years old. He is very, very tired. He has woken up in his eleventh life and he will go on and he will watch everything again. But that is what he is and what he will do. So he supposes, as they drive up to the Manor for the first time in eleven lives, that he will go on again and again.

He'll always be around. He supposes that, maybe, that's okay. He'll be around for everyone else, for their lives, and for them.

 _Fin._


End file.
